January 26, 2009by Chris

Written by Mark Grebe, Atari800MacX is the best Atari 8bit emulator for Mac OS X available today. It faithfully emulates the Atari 400, 800, XL, and 5200 on OS X 10.2 or later.

Atari800MacX is a port of the Atari 800 win32 emulator by David Firth. It has a groovy cocoa interface and offers full-screen support, file associations, disk drive and cassette image compatibility, joystick mapping, audio, screen captures, audio capture, and many other options.

The emulator requires the Atari OS ROMs to function, available above and below. The most recent version (3.8.1) was released in November of 2007 and functions like a charm on modern Macs.

Setup
1. download Atari800MacX3.8.1.dmg.gz.gz & decompress
2. drag Atari800MacX folder to your hard drive
3. copy OS ROMs into OSROMS folder
4. acquire some ROMs (.atr files, found all over the net)
5. enjoy

Features Inherited from Atari800
- Emulation of Atari 400, 800, 600 XL, 800XL, 130XE, 5200 Games System.
- 130XE compatible memory expansions: 320K, 576K, 1088K.
- Optional 4K RAM between 0xc000 and 0xcfff in 400/800 mode.
- Cycle-exact 6502 emulation, all unofficial instructions.
- Cycle-exact NMI interrupts, scanline-based POKEY interrupts.
- Cycle-exact ANTIC emulation, all display modes, precise timing.
- Player/Missile Graphics, exact priority control and collision detection.
- Exact POKEY shift registers (sound and random number generator).
- 8 disk drives, emulated at computer-to-drive communication and fast patched SIO levels.
- ATR, XFD, DCM, ATR.GZ and XFD.GZ disk images.
- Direct loading of Atari executable files.
- 42 cartridge types, raw and CART format.
- Cassette player, raw and CAS images.
- Files can be stored directly on your host computer via the H: device.
- Current emulation state can be saved in a state file.
- Sound support.
- Stereo (two POKEYs) emulation.
- Joystick controller using numeric keypad.
- Real joystick support.
- Paddles, Atari touch tablet, Koala pad, light pen, light gun, ST/Amiga mouse, Atari trak-- ball, joystick and Atari 5200 analogcontroller emulated using mouse.
- R-Time 8 emulation using host computer clock.
- Sound output may be written to WAV files
- Printer support.
- Atari palette read from a file or calculated basing on user-defined parameters.

Enhancements in Atari800MacX
- Ability to display the Atari Screen in 2x, 3x, and 4x and Fullscreen modes.
- Fullscreen and Windowed modes.
- Screen snapshots saved to TIFF files.
- Support of Macintosh Joystick/Gamepad devices.
- Full Macintosh OS X Preferences support, including saving preferences for each user.
- Full use of Macintosh Menus in Windowed mode.
- Creating of Atari ATR disk images.
- Media Status Window
- Emulation of Atari 825, Atari 1020, and Epson FX-80 Printers
- ATR Disk Editor
- Disk Image Conversion
- Atari Function Key Window
- Enhanced debug Monitor
- Ability to run emulator at full speed (not limited to 50/60 frames per second).
- Emulation of the full Atari 5200 controller, including both buttons and keypad.
- Ability to use Mac joysticks as paddles, and true 5200 analog controllers.